


As Surely As Our Love Is Bright

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Hospitalized Whizzer Brown, M/M, Marvin Not Being an Asshole (Falsettos), Marvin Tries (Falsettos), Marvin is a Mess (Falsettos), Post-Whizzer Brown's Death, Really Marvin & Everyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24089401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: So I'd been working on a fic that will stop short of ANY of this and focus on a period where Nothing Bad Happens, because dammit I needed a little fluff and escapism, but here's the thing... my inner angst gremlin is a beast and I am a monster and so I had to also write a story that was ALL about bad things happening.While Making Revisions is non-linear and moves between the two happier phases of their relationship to contrast, this one is flashbacks to different points in Whizzer's illness, as Marvin struggles to deal with his death-- with having to face the rest of his life without him, but also with having to face telling the rest of his tight-knit family how short that life might be-- and as he struggles to be present for the people he loves while they have him, despite his grief.
Relationships: Jason & Marvin (Falsettos), Marvin & Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Whizzer Brown/Marvin
Comments: 25
Kudos: 31





	1. Let's Not Think About the Passing Time

**Author's Note:**

> While there are no scenes of sexual assault and I didn't think it merited the tag, in one flashback it's alluded to-- not as something that's happened to any of the main characters, but to someone they meet during a previous hospital stay. Again, absolutely nothing graphic, the words aren't used, but it's there, and I did want to give fair warning to those who are sensitive even though it's barely a mention and I thought it would be misleading to use the tag. It comes up in the first real italicized flashback, when you hit 'the worst part is, I'm probably fine', skip to 'come to bed, Marvin' and you'll blow past the only mention without missing anything that really impacts the story.

He’s so light.

He’s so light, Marvin can only think about birds. Fragile and hollow-boned. He’s so light, this isn’t how holding him is supposed to feel.

That awful noise is him. That gut-wrenching noise he’s heard often enough, since he’d essentially moved himself into the hospital. He’s never made that noise before, he’s cried but he’s never sounded like this. He’s never been so out of his own control.

He’d taken an extended leave of absence, when they’d begun to think this might be it, that Whizzer might not come home this time. Even before then, he hadn’t been spending much time at work, but he’d put in a show of doing so every once in a while. Work, where everyone knew he had an ailing relative in the hospital, and that was all they knew. They didn’t know a fucking _thing_ about him. 

But, not knowing anything, they’d been kind. When he’d said it was an emergency and that the end could come any day, they’d been understanding, they’d told him he didn’t have to quit, he could just take some time away and come back.

Whizzer had been worried, Whizzer had been sweet. Whizzer had asked him if he would really be all right taking so much time… and he’d been stupid, he’d said he thought he had enough money to last him the rest of his life, and Whizzer had _looked_ at him…

He’d asked, point blank, how many years Marvin thought he’d be able to support himself if he never went back to work. 

Marvin had told him.

They’d seen death already. Before he’d arranged the private room for the final hospital stay, when it was just a short one until he could shake off the pneumonia and come home, they’d been in a room with three other couples, patients and partners. Two men, like Whizzer, who would be back eventually, but who would see a brief reprieve first. One man…

All of them knew, at one point. As a group they’d all come to understand it, that seven men would leave the room alive. Marvin doesn’t remember their names, any of them, though they’d all exchanged names at the time. Only that two of them had had the same common name, John or Jim or Jack. And that the boy who’d died… 

_Peaches_. He’d had a real name, but his lover called him ‘peaches’, almost invariably. They’d all had pet names, the four men taking up beds-- Whizzer was all nicknames, of course, but ‘baby’ had been… he doesn’t want to say ‘less inspired’. But perhaps less unique. Certainly less unique than ‘Whizzer’. Whizzer-who-was-also-’baby’ and peaches and puppy-or-honey-or-blondie and lamb. Two animal nicknames, one fruit nickname. Eight of them in a room trying not to cry over the rotten hand life dealt them. And the one nurse who came in and called them all ducky, all _eight_ of them, so… three animal nicknames. Sort of. He doesn’t remember anyone’s name, now, but he remembers the boy was ‘peaches’, most of the time.

He remembers with sudden and awful clarity the way the man who called him that had wept when the blow came. For days, his smile was always sad and his eyes were always red and watery, as he held onto a hand that slowly grew weaker, trembled more and then much, much less. He had done everything it was in his power to, all the little tasks that might have fallen to someone else which he was capable of doing, he handled things which seemed so dignity-robbing with _grace_. And then one day, he’d gathered the man into his arms and whispered, frantic, like he’d known it was coming before the machines began to stutter and drone, and…

Peaches had looked like a college boy, or the husk of one. That man who’d done all those things with such serenity and compassion, who had looked-- for lack of better word-- _noble_ while preventing bedsores and changing adult diapers, he couldn’t have been halfway into his twenties himself. They were _kids_. The brutal unfairness of it hit so much harder, and he’d felt a panic clawing at him, knowing what the end would look like, knowing…

Knowing it was both so fast and so slow. Fast, for him, robbing them of the future they’d planned when they came back into each other’s lives. Agonizingly slow for Whizzer, who would be feeling it-- too _soon_ , yes, but it wouldn’t feel _fast_. And…

He’d known, watching those boys, that he would do all those things, too. That he would one day help Whizzer bathe, and shave, and turn over, and… yes, and everything else, the things that Whizzer asked him to swear he wouldn’t wind up doing, still well enough to find the idea of it unbearably mortifying. But… aware that the day would come, they’d become all too aware. They wouldn’t acknowledge it, not in words. In looks, sometimes, before they each tried to force some bravado for each other. 

He’d known then. The lengths he would go to to give an ounce of comfort, and the way he would never, ever be prepared for the grief that would hit him when it all ended.

When they’d taken the body away, the other three lovers holding a broken man back from following. Marvin remembers the way Whizzer had urged him over, and the way he’d stroked the crying boy’s hair-- still a boy himself, he might have left university to care for a dying lover. Cried with him-- for peaches, whoever he’d been, and for Whizzer, whoever he wouldn’t get to be. And for the realization that he probably wouldn’t be there to see Jason grow into a young man. He hadn’t yet gotten tested, they’d merely begun living their lives under a confusing set of rules, cautions, not knowing. He’d known. The odds of living so closely and loving so closely, the way… the way things seemed to be going, he’d known and he wasn’t ready to know. He had to stay well enough to take care of Whizzer and then he could think about himself, but in his secret heart he was beginning to come to grips with the thought that he wouldn’t see Jason graduate college, get married, have kids of his own-- that if he was lucky, he’d see him start high school and that he probably wouldn’t see him graduate that, either. He’d held and comforted a man who in only a couple of days had gone from stranger to… to a fellow soldier in the trenches. He’d mourned with him, and he’d heard the way the crying wouldn’t _stop_.

So maybe it’s no surprise he makes those sounds now. 

But they have a private room, and no one tries to pry him away from Whizzer yet. Someone rubs his back, someone’s hand rests on his head. 

Cordelia is outside the room with Jason, he’s vaguely aware of Trina touching his shoulder, telling him she’s going to join them, that she’ll be right outside if he needs her. He is vaguely aware that Mendel is praying. He’s not so overrun by grief that he can’t feel a little gratitude. He doesn’t think he ever imagined feeling so grateful for Mendel even back when he was his therapist, which he was pretty shitty at, he wasn’t worth eighty bucks an hour for his professional skill or ethics. He’d been worth it because when Marvin told him there was a man, that he wanted him so badly, wanted to be with him the way he was supposed to want to be with the wife he couldn’t want, Mendel never once told him he was sick. Just tried to talk to him about minimizing everyone’s pain if he was going to choose to pursue his feelings, told him there was a healthy and unhealthy way of doing that. Well, Marvin had been pretty shitty, too, even on the occasions he was getting solid advice from his shrink, so…

So. 

It’s Mendel who stays with him as they stay with Whizzer, as what remains of him is wheeled down to the morgue. Mendel who makes whatever argument is made to allow Marvin to stay-- to allow him to sit a while in an otherwise empty morgue, with Whizzer. And however many other people are already in cold storage, he supposes, but it doesn’t really matter to him. Very little seems to. 

He takes advantage of the relative privacy, to pull back the sheet, to gently remove Whizzer’s ring, with shaking hands. 

It’s on a chain around his neck. Marvin transfers it to hang around his own.

He’d worn it, once, on his hand. He’d chided Marvin for buying it, called him silly, an engagement ring when they couldn’t get married, but he’d… he’d been so happy with it. Kept admiring it on his hand. A wide silver band, he’d thought Whizzer would want that, for it to go with his watch. The little row of littler diamonds. The shape of it heavy enough, masculine, but it caught the light just so, it was…

It was perfect for him, and he had loved it, and they had said that they could be engaged forever, and be happy. They were happy. Whizzer wore his ring and sometimes he’d just smile, because it caught his eye, because he’d moved his hand and seen it and all over again he’d just…

He used to smile down at it, on his hand, and then over at Marvin. Used to come and kiss him, and they…

When he first started losing weight, Marvin had gotten the ring re-sized, and promised he’d get it resized again when Whizzer regained the weight he’d lost-- they hadn’t yet known, how could he have known? All they’d known then was that he was dropping weight, not too dramatically yet, at first he’d wound some string around it to keep it fitting. When the weight kept coming off, for a while he’d worn it with a little plastic spacer. Eventually the chain. He’d laughed and coughed and kissed Marvin’s cheek and said it was _fine_ , he’d wear it by his heart, that was only right. He’d smiled with tears welling up in his eyes and apologized, for bowing out before they could have that wedding. They’d never counted on one, not really, but he’d still… He’d joked that Marvin would think he was cheaping out on buying him a wedding ring in return. Asked if Marvin would wear this one, when the inevitable happened.

‘Til death do us part, he’d said, isn’t that what people say? And he’d laughed-- and it was bitter-- and said he’d photographed too many weddings. He didn’t say ‘for WASP-y heterosexuals’, he didn’t have to. Marvin had slipped a little finger through the ring on the chain, hand resting against Whizzer’s chest, and he had told him they just wouldn’t be parted at all. 

At least, he thinks, not for long. 

Marvin never used to think about what a life after this one would entail. He’d always been content with the knowledge that everyone would find out in the end, and until then, no point worrying. Lately, he’s found himself hoping that whatever it is, some part of Whizzer is waiting for some part of him, that they’ll once again be some part of each other. If not that, he’s got burial plots side by side. That’s something.

The parts he can plan for he’s better at.

Or he was. He can’t plan anything more now, he can’t think about it.

But then, it’s some small, cold comfort to think… he is not obligated to.

“I’m going to go make some phone calls.” Mendel breaks the silence, squeezing his arm. “Burial society. Find out who’ll come down and take care of him. I’ll be back.”

Marvin nods, his voice doesn’t come. He’s had so much time to come to grips with death, he’s seen death before, why is it such a shock now?

_“Apple, peaches, pumpkin pie.” Ellis-- Marvin thinks the young man’s name is Ellis-- says, does not quite sing, his hand moving over the lank and greasy hair of the boy in the bed. “That’s what-- He used to play this old record, and… It was the first song we danced to. Sophomore year, my sophomore year. His room was next to mine and we… I reached out for his hand. It was a joke, it wasn’t a joke.”_

_“That’s why he’s ‘peaches’?”_

_“He’s peaches, I’m pumpkin.” He smiles. “Among other things. He’s peaches because peaches are my favorite. Favorite pie, favorite fruit, favorite smell. Well, peaches and coffee, for smells, but ‘coffee’ is a terrible cute nickname for a sweet boy. With a sweet ass.”_

_That gets a weary but amused snort from the bed, and Ellis smiles, and leans over and kisses his boy’s forehead. Whispers to him to sleep._

_Most of the room is asleep. One of the others in a chair, one in his lover’s bed, the two curled together. Whizzer is sleeping, though he stirs whenever Marvin isn’t touching him, is too cuddly a sleeper even now. Marvin can make noise or move him around as much as he likes and Whizzer won’t wake, but if he takes his hand away, he’ll wake. Reach out. It’s sweet, even when he’d once been spiky and unwilling to admit to love he had always been so needy for touch beyond just sex, but he’d rather not wake him in the first place._

_“Whizzer’s had his nickname a lot longer than I’ve known him. We’d been together for weeks before he even told me his first name, but to be honest… he really couldn’t be anyone but Whizzer.”_

_“That’s cute, that’s cute. What’s he call you?”_

_“Oh, you know… the usual things, I guess. Honey, sweetie, hot stuff… pain-in-the-ass. I hear that last one a lot. To be fair, not without reason. I assume you’re pumpkin because pumpkin’s_ his _favorite.”_

_“Yeah. And the, um… cloves. In a pumpkin pie. I guess in anything you put cloves in. Smells like autumn. He loves autumn. We met in September. I used to love summer, but then we met in September. And the air around us smelled like cloves.”_

_“Whizzer… I saw him smile for the very first time and I… Everything changed. He made me real, a real person. He woke me up.”_

_“You’re a dad, right?” Ellis asks him. He’s on his feet now, tidying up belongings that had spread out over the course of the day. The vase of carnations, the stack of books he reads aloud from-- no one else in the room ever stops him, his lover could no longer focus on the pages, probably couldn’t much focus on the story either, but it was some comfort to him to listen to the rise and fall of a familiar voice, familiar words. Narnia and Lord of the Rings. Jacket, slippers, just things… a stuffed lion tucked in under a too-thin arm, beat up and ragged, maybe twenty years old itself. Two framed photographs, one of the two of them in better days, one where they’re jumbled in with a group of students, all achingly young. Another frame, this one with some colorful little art print. A little pewter dragon holding a marble under its claw. Their little side table and the tray that can swivel in and out of the way are both home to so many_ things _, and the area around the bed. An open suitcase stowed beneath. Little things to make it all less frightening, more familiar. More than any of the others, they need it._

_“Yeah.” Marvin nods. Jason had been in to see Whizzer, Trina brought him in on the weekend to visit there, Whizzer had tried to send him home to spend the weekend with Jason, but he’d been afraid to. Despite all reassurances, he’d been afraid to. His time during the week to spend with Whizzer had been so limited, with work… he fretted every second he was away from the hospital. “A son, from my first marriage.”_

_“How many times have you been married?” His brow furrows a little._

_“Just the once.”_

_“Then it’s not really a ‘first’ marriage, is it?”_

_He looks down at Whizzer, laces their fingers together and looks at the ring, glinting there. A promise they never expected would be fulfilled, so why does it hurt to realize they won’t have the_ time _?_

_“No. I guess not.” He says, and brings Whizzer’s hand to his lips, watches him sleep peacefully through being kissed at. “Why?”_

_“I don’t know, I just… i don’t know. I haven’t spoken to my parents in a while. And I just… what would you, um… what would you say, as a dad, to, like… someone who’s… scared?”_

_He’s so fucking_ young _, for the first time he sees past the exhaustion and really gets how young Ellis is. He’d thought it was unfair on the rest of them, the other men in the room mostly between twenty-eight and thirty-five, if he had to guess. But Ellis and his boyfriend, they’re… they’re so fucking young._

_“I’m not… maybe not the best dad, myself. But I guess I’d say… of course you’re scared.” He closes his eyes, tries to think of what he’d say if it was Jason, sitting by a lover’s bedside, looking at what they’re looking at. How he’d counsel him, if he could see him grow into a man, if he could be with him through the hardest parts of life-- though he holds onto the thought that this is not a hardship Jason will face for himself. Ellis could almost look like the man Jason might grow into, though, dark curls and dark eyes and pale skin, and a sort of sad loveliness reminiscent of Trina, it’s easy enough to feel fatherly towards him, only… misplaced in time. “Oh, kiddo, of course you’re scared, and upset. Angry, sad… Having to watch someone you love in pain, having to wonder what you’ll do with yourself without him… it’s_ hard _. You’re allowed to be scared. I know you don’t want to let him see it… you want him to think that you’ll be okay. He already has so much to be afraid about, and… I know you want to make it all easier on him. But you can be scared, and hurt. This is happening to you, too.”_

_“It should have been me.” He says, and he looks so composed, except for the tears streaming down his face. “I cleaned up my act, for him. But I was a mess. If you could smoke it, snort it, pop it, or drop it, I’d do it-- though I guess nothing intravenous. Didn’t like needles. Like them even less now. Had a lot of_ sex _, though. My whole freshman year, I was finally free and I went_ wild _. And then I-- I don’t know. Then I met this boy and I didn’t really care about that shit. I didn’t have an ‘addictive personality’, I just said yes to everything when I was bored. Or scared, heaven knows what of. Scared in a different way, from this. But I wasn’t bored, with him, and I was brave. He was always careful, I never was. But-- but one… one fucking time, someone--”_

_And the composure really breaks, for the first time he’s utterly uncomposed, sobbing across his lover’s legs, all but clawing at the blanket, his shoulders shaking, and so Marvin leaves Whizzer’s side to rub Ellis’ back. Because he_ is _a dad-- even if he’s not quite old enough to be Ellis’-- and he can’t watch a frightened, anguished boy without parents of his own to turn to just break down, when he’s asked… asked for him to be there, useless as he is. To pretend for a minute, to help him not be so alone._

_“Whazzat?” Whizzer snuffles, lifting his head. His vision focuses, his posture tenses. “Is he--?”_

_“No, no, it’s-- go back to sleep, baby. Just a hard night, but he’s… Hey, hey, come on, kid… that’s it, just let it out, you’re-- you’re-- I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Just get it all out now and… it’ll be better.”_

_Slowly, the sobs cease to wrack him, slowly he returns to the odd ageless mask his face normally rests in-- not unfeeling, just… serene in suffering, somehow. You don’t see his youth until he cracks._

_“The worst part is I’m probably fine.” He says, with a ragged little sound, somewhere between bitter, mirthless laugh and honest sob. “Because we didn’t… after what happened. I keep hoping maybe somewhere we were careless with_ something _, because it’s not fair, him going like this, and me_ fine _. But we stopped-- but I was afraid to hurt him. You know what I mean?”_

_Marvin doesn’t, but then… he’d never been wild, and by the time they knew Whizzer was sick, it was far too late to think about changing anything between them. They’d started using condoms anyway, just in case-- Whizzer took it upon himself, though at that point Marvin wouldn’t have bothered asking him to, considering. But it was something he could_ do _. When they lost all control and he needed to cling to something, and he wanted to protect Marvin, even if... It was something he could_ do _._

_“If I ever found the bastard, if he hasn’t already wasted away in the gutter where he belongs, I swear I’d shove him onto the subway tracks, I’d--” Ellis sniffs. Anger ripples across the facade and then slips down deep inside him again. He rubs a gentle hand over his lover’s front, big sweeping loops that cover chest and stomach alike. “My sweet little peach, my peaches… coming home like… He was bleeding, his lip was, he didn’t know where he_ was _. Tore his shirt, and I just-- I thought he got jumped. A mugging or a-- a fucking_ mistake _, maybe someone mistook him for somebody else, someone they had a problem with, not…”_

_And then Marvin’s brain kicks into gear, he_ realizes _. He doesn’t know what to say, about a thing like that. Maybe no one does, but he certainly doesn’t. He’s probably the least helpful person there is, but Whizzer’s stuck in bed and everyone else is asleep, and so Marvin sits there rubbing Ellis’ back, until another coughing fit wakes his lover again, and he can retreat back to his own, leave them a little bubble of privacy, pretend he doesn’t know._

_“Come to bed, Marvin.” Whizzer encourages him. He’s on the wrong side-- they gave Whizzer an IV, on the wrong side, so Marvin is on Whizzer’s side of the bed, or what it would be, if this was their bed._

_It feels all wrong, for sleep. They’ve been to this side of each other after sex, times that one or the other of them just rolled that way when they needed to separate, but they’ve never slept to this side of each other. He does his best to settle in, feels the way Whizzer relaxes against him as best he can._

_“I hate this.”_

_“So go_ home _.” He smiles gently, runs his fingers through Marvin’s hair._

_“I’d hate that more.”_

_“I’m not going anywhere yet. Just here to be safe… I get out Thursday, Wednesday if I’m real good. Come on… you wanna go home?”_

_“No. You don’t sleep without me.”_

_“I do if I press the magic button. I’ll sleep like a_ rock _. You don’t have to worry about me.”_

_“I don’t sleep without you.”_

_“Oh._ Well _.” Whizzer leans their heads together, very carefully gets his arm up around him without tugging at the IV line. “Try and sleep here, then. Close your eyes._ Close your eyes _. Go to_ sleep _.”_

_“They’ve only been together a couple of years--” He starts to whisper._

_“We haven’t had even that long, is it different?”_

_“No, I just mean… we’d have had a little over three years by now if we had been ready when we met, and you get to come home on Thursday.”_

_“Wednesday.”_

_He fights the urge to argue just out of habit. “Wednesday. With good behavior. I just mean, that boy… this is it. And everything his boyfriend does for him, they’re so young, they’ve been together just a couple years, and they’re undergrads. I thought he was older, but they… they’re not even going to finish out their education.”_

_“Not everyone does.”_

_“Yeah, but it’s a hell of a reason.”_

_“It is.” Whizzer agrees._

_“They never got to be men, really. I mean_ really _. They’re being robbed of that. And I don’t know how he does it all the way he does, because I already feel like I’m going to be… I mean I’m_ going to _take care of you.”_

_“You don’t have to do it all alone, you know. I mean I’m really holding onto the idea that you might never have to change a fucking diaper for me.”_

_“If it happens, it happens, I-- I mean at least I’ve changed diapers before, it’s--”_

_“It’s pretty different.”_

_“I know. But look, sometimes in life, there’s-- you know. I mean… there is nothing you could ever need that I wouldn’t do.”_

_“Yeah, I was afraid you’d say that.”_

_“Mm, love you, too, baby.”_

_Whizzer sighs, as deeply as he’s currently able. It sets off a little cough, but not too bad, and at least curled up like this together, Marvin can rub his back._

_“This is it, you know. Last chance. Take a look at what’s happening and… cards on the table, someday it’s me, if you can’t deal then now is--”_

_“Whizzer Brown, don’t you_ dare _finish that sentence. Did I not just tell you? I’m here. For all of it.”_

_“It’s ugly.”_

_“Yeah. But you’re my fiance.” He braves a smile._

_“Mm. Silly of us.” Whizzer says, but he looks at his hand anyway, at the ring he still wears there. “But… I like it. Your forever-fiance. No wedding bells-- which is fine by me, I’ve heard enough of those to last a lifetime and I don’t imagine they make anyone any happier in the long run. No canopy… okay. I can live with that one, too, though I guess it’d mean more.”_

_“You want me to step on a glass?”_

_“Not_ here _. Did you and Trina use a glass or did you use a lightbulb?”_

_“We used a real glass. Come on, what do you take me for?”_

_“Lightbulb makes a better sound. Gets a big_ pop _.”_

_“Doesn’t a lightbulb let off fumes?”_

_“I don’t know, what am I, a scientist? Maybe not a new one. A pristine and unused lightbulb. To symbolize our… pristine and unused…”_

_“Shush.” He cranes his neck to kiss Whizzer’s forehead. “Now you’re being-- C’mon. Baby.”_

_“Can you take that? Looking at them, can you take what they’re going through?”_

_“I don’t have a choice. I can’t take walking away from you, not again. What it did to me the first time… Maybe we had to. I had to learn to be a better man, and if we’d been together I might not have broken old patterns, I might not have… And I was hurting.”_

_“We both had to grow up. I’m sorry… we don’t have more time now that we have.”_

_“Hush, you-- No. You didn’t choose this, you couldn’t have known. It… happened. You couldn’t have known.”_

_“Still… We might not_ know _but I think we can guess, I-- If I’d learned that lesson a little quicker, I might…”_

_“How could you have?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Well I know. This isn’t a-- You didn’t even roll the dice on something, they were just… rolled for you. And I’m not angry. Not with you. And I couldn’t be. Not for this. Don’t you know that? How much I-- how badly I-- And how much things are different now. And I could never-- Oh, baby, if you don’t know it now, tell me I’ve got time to prove it.”_

_“You’ve got time. I’ll be out of this bed before you know it, we’ve still got some time. And I-- I know.” Whizzer cups his cheek. “I know.”_

They’d known this time was different. Not when he was admitted, but… a couple of weeks in, they knew. There had been other times, a quick overnight in the ER over some little scare, a breathing treatment or a question about some new symptom that there just weren’t answers for, and this was different, but when they’d come in, he hadn’t…

He hadn’t realized it would be the last time. Not that it could have changed anything. They’d already crammed as much life as they could into their time between doctors, and whether it was a few days or a few weeks or forever, Marvin was going to do what he could to make the hospital stay as bearable as possible. And he was always going to hold onto every moment he could with Whizzer, but he hadn’t known this would be…

He just hadn’t known. He hadn’t known the changes would be so dramatic, that once he started to take that turn it would go so fast, when he’d been infected but healthy as long as he had. No real way of knowing how long, but it had happened before they got back together, and they’d had months. They’d had about all that spring without a hint of anything being wrong, they’d had a blissful happiness and no clue what was coming. And when it started, it hadn’t seemed… 

It hadn’t seemed like it would end like this.

He’d loved a lifetime in the brief span of it in which he’d known Whizzer, the briefer span in which he’d had him, and now… now his heart’s gone out of him.

Even knowing this was the end, they were happy such a short while ago, they really were. There’d been room for so many emotions in him, then, his heart had been full and now where is it?

_He’s so light._

_He’s so light, Marvin can only think about birds. Fragile and hollow-boned. He’s so light, this isn’t how holding him is supposed to feel._

_But he’s on his feet, determined to be, and so Marvin holds him up and tries not to think about what Whizzer’s body used to weigh. He still hasn’t forgotten. He hopes he dies before he forgets._

_He feels guilty for hoping such a thing, when he has Jason. When he should want to live as long as he can for Jason. And of course he does, or a part of him does, but whenever he thinks too much about his own death, his wants are fractured and his emotions run too high._

_“Are you sure you don’t want a chair?” He whispers, though he could hold him upright for as long as he could stand on his own feet, probably. How little of him there is left, he could keep him upright and then carry him back to his bed. But he wants him to be comfortable._

_“I don’t want a chair. I want to stand. Marv… I’m all right. Thanks.”_

_He kisses him, he fixes his kippah. Their son, his and Trina’s and Whizzer’s and Mendel’s, is becoming a man, and while he wishes it could be a day of unmingled pride and happiness, well… it is what it is, and he wouldn’t trade it, he wouldn’t trade holding Whizzer at his side, wouldn’t trade the way it felt to break the news…_

_There’s so much he wouldn’t trade. Even when he thinks about the times that were hard, the mistakes that they made… he wouldn’t trade a bad day with Whizzer for a good day without him. He wouldn’t trade a conversation which might have hurt him for a void where a conversation might have been. He wouldn’t trade the days when Whizzer used to sleep around for monogamy with anyone else. Even now…_

He had been happy, through the pain. He’d been… _glad_. That hadn’t been in doubt, the strain had been great but he’d seemed so strong-- _renewed_. His health had been in sharp decline, but he’d rallied so well Marvin had almost…

No, no almost about it, he had believed. He’d believed that he was improving. He knew he wouldn’t leave the hospital again, but he’d thought… he had thought they would have more time. Whizzer was stronger, he might have another-- another little while. If not the rest of the year, a month, if not a month, a week. 

He’d been certain he had a week.

His hands absently move in familiar patterns, as if Whizzer were merely sleeping, and needed his touch. He comes back to himself to find he’s been caressing him, to find how little of Whizzer is left.

“Knock-knock.” Mendel says, his voice soft. He waits a moment before approaching, doesn’t expect Marvin to answer him just yet. “Someone’s coming to take care of him. So… so.”

Marvin nods, struggling to form words, giving up on them. For a long moment, they just stand there, silent. 

“Trina and I can make the arrangements… for whatever needs-- arranging.”

“We have plots.” He manages. “He has-- I thought I’d better arrange, when I knew we were both…”

“Okay.” Mendel meets his eyes before he can turn away. “We’ll get that all taken care of. Marvin…”

“Yes.” He nods.

“You’re--?”

“Yes.” He cups Whizzer’s face, tries not to think about how little he resembles himself, still. Tries instead to think that when he dies, it will just be… coming home, and a wholer and realer Whizzer will be waiting to welcome him, into… whatever death is. Whatever it is. He doesn’t like to speculate when it’s so far beyond his control, but he has to think somehow Whizzer will be a part of it. “I’m not dying yet. I will.”

“If you ever need to talk--”

“I’m pretty ready.” He cuts him off. “Nothing about this is ideal. I won’t get to watch my boy grow up. Mendel, you--”

When he turns to face him, it’s to see Mendel already watching him, his expression somewhere beyond serious.

“Of course.” He grips Marvin’s arm, steady and firm, but gentle. “You don’t even have to ask.”

“I mean I know you have been…”

“Like he’s my own.”

“I just… it’ll be… different.” He swallows. “It’ll be different when you’re the only one he’s got. But-- he’s been, and you’ve been… I think you’re a better father than you are a shrink.”

“I know I am.”

“I mean I’m lucky, that you’re my son’s father. He’ll need you.”

“Cordelia’s going to run some food over to your place, Trina says she’s got the spare key.”

“No hors d'oeuvres. I can’t…” His breath hitches. He hadn’t realized there was so much strength in him, to feel it leave him like this. 

“We’ll take the leftovers, I’ll tell her-- just some soup, and something you can eat cold without any trouble. Trina and I will handle everything else. We’ll talk to the burial people, and we’ll… we’ll get the information from you about the plot, and we’ll… we’ll go through Whizzer’s address book and just let people know, I guess, we’ll handle everything. You just… mourn.”

“I’d like to be alone a minute, if you-- if you could…”

“I’ll catch Cordelia before she goes. Marvin… who knows?”

“That I’m dying? Char. You. Whizzer knew.”

_“Marvin…”_

_“Hush, forget it. Go to sleep. Dream of handsome men.”_

_“You’ve had the test.” Whizzer’s hand closes over his arm. Grip surprisingly strong, for how he’s been doing of late._

_“Go to sleep.” His voice breaks. “Don’t worry about me, worry about you.”_

_“Little late to worry about me.”_

_“Little late to worry about me, too. And a little early. I’m not sick yet.”_

_“But?”_

_“I’m okay.” He brings Whizzer’s hand to his lips. “You went months, before you… before we started to see it. I’m not afraid. Not for me. If you can take it I can take it.”_

_“Taking it’s pretty lousy.”_

_“I know.” He kisses his hand again. Holds back the tears. “I’m in the dress rehearsals.”_

_“Come lie down with me.”_

_Marvin does, tucking himself against Whizzer’s body, trying to think of their bed. Their bed is infinitely softer, smells like home, there’s space around them… but the hospital bed has Whizzer in it, which matters more. He’s thin, he’s lost so much of that muscle tone, and yet… when Marvin lays himself down in the circle of Whizzer’s arms, he still feels held safe. Even if there’s less pectoral beneath his cheek and the arms around him are thinner. None of the very slight layer of fat which gave his body that supple and touchable beauty-- which, more importantly, offered him any kind of protection. Now it’s wasted muscle, the places where the line of bone and tendon stand out stark through thin and sallow skin…_

_And yet, and yet, and yet… Whizzer holds him, and the world is easier to face. Whizzer smiles and he still dazzles, Whizzer…_

_Whizzer’s eyes, even when they’re tired or unfocused, are still the most beautiful eyes Marvin knows, more beautiful than ever for the time he’s been allowed to spend with them. Whizzer’s hands still spread so wide over him sometimes, long fingers, broad palms, and he can forget for a little moment, he can lose himself still, in a hand over his back or over his heart._

_And… whatever the changes, however hard to bear, Whizzer’s body is still… it’s still him. He’s still in it. Marvin still finds some comfort, some joy, in the beating of his heart and the warmth of his skin, in touching him. In sponge baths, making jokes to keep Whizzer from feeling any indignity over it-- he doesn’t think it’s so undignified, he’s happy just to be able to touch him, to be tender. To be intimate, if not as intimate as either of them might like. They joke about it, but they’re both exhausted, here. And most of the time, Whizzer’s hooked up to a heart monitor, so if Marvin tried to excite him, someone would rush in with a crash cart._

_But it’s all right. It’s all right-- not good, remotely, but all right, if he can lie with him like this, and be held._

_“I can’t… I don’t… I don’t know how to deal with-- loving me can’t be the thing that kills you.” Whizzer says, and it’s as broken as Marvin has heard him since the diagnosis-- such as it was-- was new. Since the first time it set in that his life was changed, maybe over._

_“Loving you made me_ live _.” Marvin holds tight to him, mindful of tubes and wires. “Loving you made me a better man, loving you made me a better_ father _. Loving you… is everything. And this… isn’t something you did. But even if it was, I-- Death’s cheap. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.”_

_“Sure, but I hope you don’t.”_

_“I hope I don’t, too, but you know what I mean, I mean-- It’s a small price to pay. It’s not like I was ever going to live forever. Death’s the one guarantee in life. Loving you? I fought the odds for that. And I’m proud I finally got it right. Whatever comes next, I’m proud I got this much right in my life. For you, for everyone. For me.”_

_He suspects Whizzer is too tired to argue, but for now, he’ll take it. For now, he’ll take what he can._


	2. So Let's Drink to That and the Passing Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marvin deals with disclosing his own impending illness, between the memories of a life together cut short.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some mention/thoughts about doctor-assisted suicide at the very tail end of the chapter, but not as a thing that happens. Still, like, if it's a thing you're super sensitive to, literally it's the second-to-the-last paragraph (if you can call the last line a paragraph).

He still has things, in the room. Their things, his things… when the burial society takes Whizzer, Marvin isn’t sure how he’ll handle going back to that room. Seeing the bed stripped and changed for someone else, seeing Whizzer’s things, clothes he hasn’t worn in so long, the last bouquet he’ll ever buy him-- or at least the last one Whizzer was around to appreciate, he’d summoned up the strength to appreciate it, gotten up from his bed to bury his face in the flowers, leaning on Marvin’s side, to tell him where in the room to put them… 

The bed isn’t made up, it’s rumpled, divot in the pillow, just the way it had been before, when he’d helped Whizzer into his dressing gown from home, he’d insisted he wasn’t going to look like an invalid at Jason’s bar mitzvah, and they’d...

It had happened so fast, at the end. There’d been nothing they could _do_ , when it was over it was just… over. Not even a goodbye… they’d held off on goodbye too long. True, for a time, he’d treated every goodnight as if it might be. He’d watched his lover, his only… his only real lover, watched him waste away in his arms, watched him battle each new indignity with more cheer than anyone should be asked to put on… and no matter how many times his bravery was tested, he showed himself twice the man Marvin thinks most are.

Sure, he’d cried, too. He’d tried not to, but they both had. Whenever they had had to be apart, they tended to find each other red-eyed from doing their crying in private. And some nights, they hadn’t been able to help it, crying into each other. It had been draining, crying was always draining, but it was a little better when they had each other, and now…

Whizzer won’t have to watch him get sick. And he has people who will look out for him, same as they did… same as they did. He won’t be alone. But he’s selfish enough to wish he had the comfort of a lover’s arms to look forward to, even as he’s glad Whizzer won’t suffer through seeing him, through the guilt. He couldn’t keep the truth from him, though he’d done his best not to let him worry… tried to say he was only tired from worry, only too scared to focus on taking care of himself, no appetite when he was so focused on Whizzer, and maybe all those things are still true, but… it’s hard to tell. When he’d talked to Charlotte about himself, when he’d been tested, he was… healthy. As close to it as he could be, just tired and scared. So tired and scared he couldn’t summon up much of a feeling about his own impending mortality, but… he doesn’t know where the lines are between not taking care of himself and the inevitable decline.

He takes advantage of the empty room, of everyone else rushing around taking care of leaving food at his place and picking up papers laid out on his desk, the information on the burial plots and the last draft of a very informal will and a list of people to contact, taking care of everything else that needs taking care of, of the confusion of it. He takes advantage of the empty bed which once was Whizzer’s, of no one coming in to strip it just yet. Of a pillow that still smells like him. And like hospital, but then, the two had become indistinguishable towards the end. Even bringing toiletries from home instead of the hospital-issue soap couldn’t quite stop that hospital smell from taking over. Hell, Marvin probably already smells more like hospital than anything else, and he hasn’t yet needed...

He hadn’t thought he could do any more crying, he’d thought it had all bled out of him, but it wells up again and he lets it out, all the crushing, soul-rending pain of loss. All this time to prepare for it and still it takes him by storm even on a second wind.

He’s in the middle of it, when the door opens, crying so hard it’s difficult to pull back from full-throated grief-- he doesn’t know if he’d even try, if it had been anyone but Jason. But it’s Jason, and maybe a boy who’s had the day he’s had shouldn’t have to see his father cry, on top of it all… not like this. Not after everything. Hell of an introduction to manhood, losing one father and seeing another cry like this. He pulls himself together as best he can, scrubs at his eyes and sniffles back tears, and motions his son closer. 

“C’mere, kiddo.” He says, hoarse, voice still thick with tears. “C’mere.”

Jason climbs up into the spot in the bed that had been Marvin’s, so many nights, burrows into Marvin’s arms with a sniffle of his own.

“It’s not _fair_.” He says, his own voice wavering. 

“No. It’s not.” Marvin agrees, kisses the top of his son’s head. “If you’re angry, be angry. If you need to cry, cry. Yell, scream, whatever you gotta do, do. Nothing about this is fair…”

“I don’t know if I’m angry.”

“That’s okay, too. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Hey… I’m proud of you.”

“You’re not too sad to--?” He cuts himself off with a sharp sniffle. “To think about that?”

“I’m… learning what heartbroken really is, but I could never be too sad to be proud of _you_. Not every day a father gets to see his son become a man. I spent my whole life failing to be as good at it as you already are… you shouldn’t have had to grow up quite so fast.” He sighs. His fault… he’d mishandled too much. Marvin’s poor parenting had Jason growing up too fast just to be able to take care of himself. His own parents had let Marvin go on without growing up at all, though he’d been neglected, too… one hell of a family legacy, but if anyone could get it right for the next generation, he thinks it’s Jason. He’s just sorry he’ll never see it. “I don’t know how you turned out so good, kid, wasn’t anything I did. Or is it not ‘kid’ anymore?”

“You helped. You taught me things. And you try to cook.”

“I guess that’s something.”

“How long is it supposed to feel like this?”

“Hm?”

“When someone dies, how long does it feel like this?”

“I don’t know. I… I never lost anyone before. Not… not like this. It-- it’s gonna hurt. Someday you’ll be able to remember things, and it won’t hurt as bad. You’ll still miss him, but it… it’ll be easier. You’ll remember going to the park, or the movies, or things he said, and-- it’ll be easier.”

“Was Whizzer already sick, the last time? That we went to the park? Did you know he was going to--?” Jason’s breath hitches, he hides his face.

“He was… but no, I didn’t know-- none of us knew how bad. He was just… tired.” He rubs Jason’s back, lets him cry, tries not to start back up again himself. “He was just tired a lot, and… and he wasn’t-- he didn’t want us to worry about him. We didn’t know.”

“I was worried anyway.”

“So was I.” 

How could they not be? It wasn’t like Whizzer to get worn out running around the park with Jason, who was not exactly the most active child. And it wasn’t like him to pass up ice cream on the way home. And Marvin had known… he’d known before that weekend that Whizzer’s appetites had all dipped, had caught him in unguarded moments, seen him anxious and uncertain. Had been told not to worry, and so he played along, until he couldn’t. Waited for Whizzer to get better, until it was all too clear… and even then, they’d… Facing it head on honestly was too much to bear. They both knew long before they could start to talk about it, in hushed tones and short bursts, between bouts of pretending they weren’t dying.

They…

“Jason… Whizzer loved you very much. And if he’d known then, everything… how it would go… maybe he would have sat down with us, and talked about it sooner. About how it might… How he wouldn’t get better. A lot of men are...are getting sick. Whizzer-- Whizzer was already sick a long time before we knew about it. And it was… slow. So slow none of us noticed at first. And when he did, he wanted to think he’d get better and it would be-- it would be silly making us all scared for nothing. This is… a new disease, and nobody knows very much about it yet. And doctors like Charlotte are so busy just trying to help everyone, that… they don’t have any answers right now either. I-- I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care about answers. Answers can’t make anything better!”

“No. Probably not.”

“I just want-- I just want--”

“Me, too.” He whispers. “I want him back.”

“I-- I think I am angry.”

“That’s okay.” He kisses the top of Jason’s head again. 

“Why did he have to die? Why _now_?”

“Because life’s not fair… nothing is. That’s why we have to be. Which… I haven’t been good at. But you have.”

“I wish I’d never had my bar mitzvah.” He spits the words out and curls in on himself further, in the hospital bed, in his father’s arms. The way he used to, when he was small, and Marvin wasn’t… he wasn’t a very good father, but there were times when he did all right. When he’d be in the den late at night ‘working’ just to avoid going to bed with his wife, and Jason would get up in the middle of his own night, awake after some nightmare, always an anxious boy-- with his parents, maybe it was inevitable-- and he’d go to Marvin for comfort. It was the one time he would. It was the one time Marvin seemed to know how to give it. He’d lie down on the couch and tell Jason if he didn’t want to sleep, they’d stay awake, and he’d hold him, and after Jason said as much as he ever would about his nightmares, he’d bore him back to sleep telling him about the work he was supposedly doing. And he’d tuck him in. And he’d understand something about fatherhood, for a little while.

“Hey, hey...don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

“I know it was… I know this is not a day you want to remember proudly. But I am proud of you. Whizzer was proud of you. And it meant so much… all right? You know? Getting to stand by you, as one of your step-fathers… is the last gift anyone gave him. And the best. And… the best gift anyone ever gave me, for that matter. You’ve always been… you’ve always been the best thing to happen to me, and I haven’t always… Today is… okay, it’s the worst day of our lives so far. But we made his last day good. _You_ made his last day good. So I’m proud, and I’m grateful. And… for me, I can always say, on the worst day of my life, I still had one _beautiful_ thing to be grateful for. Which is more than a lot of people get. I know it’s not fair to you… but we can’t undo what’s done. All we can do is try… all we can do is try and hold onto what’s good. We gave someone we love the best last day he could have had.”

He’s not doing a good job of not crying. He’s not bawling, he’s not screaming himself hoarse and tearing his hair out, which is something. But he’s not not crying. He thinks he could spend the rest of his life not not crying. Which, to be fair… what’s he got? 

“I hate it. I hate everything and I don’t-- I don’t-- I just--”

“I know. I know.”

“Well, when’s it stop?” He asks, plaintive and so young.

“Sweetheart, if I could tell you… But someday. Someday… you’ll be okay again.”

“... Will you?” Jason asks. Of course he does. It’s not a question Marvin is remotely ready to tackle, but of course it’s the question Jason would ask… With every right to be selfish and to think about his own hurt, he’s still worried about everyone else. Marvin’s not sure how he helped make someone so good, and he’s not sure what to do with him right now. 

“Come on, now.” He gives his shoulder a squeeze, a gentle jostling, tries to put on any kind of a brave face. “No. Probably not. But it’s different… it’s different. You… you’ll have time. And it’s… it’s nature, every man outlives his parents, if things go the way they should, and-- usually not by so long. It’s not fair it should be by so long, and we got so little _time_. And he… _God_ , he loved us so much, we… we had something so good and it was so short.”

The brave face crumbles. He holds his son close. He cries. 

They cry.

_“Hey, I found something.” Whizzer announces, waves Jason over. He’s been moving his things in, mostly during the week. His schedule is loose and flexible, he’d moved boxes in during times he could get away from work, and in the evenings Marvin would come home and help him find the right spot for everything. They’d hung the print from over Whizzer’s couch over their bed, found room for…_

_Well, they’d found room for_ everything _. Marvin’s apartment had been pretty empty without him, at least on weekdays. Every room not filled with signs of Jason just waiting for Whizzer._

_“What?” Jason trots over, mildly interested as Whizzer reaches into this latest box and pulls out a letterman jacket with a flourish._

_“Box of old high school stuff. Most of it is past due to get tossed, but this is in pretty good shape for something I haven’t thought about in about a decade.”_

_“About a decade? Sorry, is fifteen years a decade now?” Marvin teases._

_“_ Fourteen _, and-- hey, be nice. And I was still wearing the jacket after I left high school, before I got a new one and put it in storage, so yeah, about a decade. Can you behave and let me have a moment here?”_

_“I’ll behave, I’ll behave.” He comes over to where Whizzer is crouched over the box, jacket in hand, where Jason is standing with him. Gets one hand in Whizzer’s hair and the other in Jason’s, feeling a swelling of happiness he doesn’t know what to do with. He lets Jason go with a little ruffling, leans his hip into Whizzer’s shoulder and keeps a hand on him._

_“Try this on.” Whizzer holds the jacket out, Jason ducks down a little to slip his arms into it._

_He’s_ drowning _in it, and it’s the sweetest thing Marvin’s ever seen, the glow on Jason’s face as he holds his arms out, hands disappearing into the sleeves, as he spins around, as he traces a finger around the patches down the front._

_“Baby, get your camera.” Marvin urges, separating from Whizzer with a final squeeze to his shoulders._

_“You get my camera, I’m already down here. Bring it. Hey, looking good, buddy!”_

_“You wore this in high school?” Jason attempts to adjust the jacket, but it remains too big on him, will for a_ while _. Then again, he’s growing… Marvin goes to the shelf with Whizzer’s personal camera-- shelves Whizzer put up. Books and decorative tchotchkes and some camera stuff. Things actually attractively arranged, instead of just… stacked around where they weren’t in the way or shoved into closets._

_“Yup. Nineteen sixty-seven.”_

_“I wasn’t even_ born _then.”_

_“Gee, thanks.” Whizzer laughs. “Am I that old?”_

_“Yup.” Marvin puts the camera in his hand. “Welcome to fatherhood.”_

_Whizzer would have been… about nineteen, when Jason was born. So he’s still pretty damn young for a father, at least for a father of a twelve year old, but… that’s what he is, that’s what he’s become. Marvin watches as he snaps pictures, a couple candid between the poses. Watches Jason go back and forth between laughter and intense self-consciousness, watches the adoration that shines from Whizzer’s face as he snaps pictures and jokes with him._

_“How about you hold onto that?” He says, before Jason can take the jacket back off._

_“What, really?”_

_“Yeah. You’ll grow into it, cool guy. I mean unless you plan on going for one of your own, but… you could keep it anyway.” Whizzer smiles, leans into Marvin a little, and Marvin runs a hand back through his hair, reaches down to take the camera back from him. Just in time for Jason to tackle Whizzer with a hug._

_The two of them chat a while in excited tones, about baseball, about spending the next day in the park tossing a ball around, Whizzer uses words Marvin still doesn’t understand-- hell, Marvin’s fuzzy on what ‘fielding’ is, anything outside of the pitcher, the catcher, and the guy at bat is fuzzy to him, and everything he knows about the concept of basemen comes from Abbott and Costello. But he likes letting their conversation wash over him as he puts the camera back in its place, and moves the box of high school crap out of the way and into the linen closet, just shoved to the back of the floor there, so no one kicks it or trips over it-- he thinks there’s more in there worth saving, if not much more, Whizzer can sort through it later._

_And, if Whizzer trusts him with the camera, he can spend Saturday snapping pictures of the two of them in the park. Buy a round of ice cream when they finally get tired of tossing a ball around, or just get tired. Enjoy having a day just to bask in the joy of having this, the most beautiful family he never dreamed… He never dreamed it could ever be perfect like this. So perfect that he’s happier than he ever imagined just standing on the sidelines and soaking them in. He and Jason have their things, and anything he can do to feel like he’s important, like Jason needs him, looks up to him, he treasures those things. But he doesn’t feel out of place when he watches Whizzer step in to fill the gaps and be the rest of the dad Jason needs. He just feels happy._

“I just miss him.” Jason says at last. 

“So do I, kid. So do I. I’m really going to miss that man… he was… he was good, he was a good stepdad. I don’t think I could have met someone who’d have loved you more. He-- I--”

How can he even say? It’s not just how Whizzer loved Jason, it’s the things he taught Marvin about fatherhood, all the things he’d struggled with that felt easier when he had Whizzer there to tell him what he was doing right, what he needed to do better. How much easier he could breathe when he wasn’t doing it all alone, how he’d tried… he had done his best for two years to be a father alone, on their weekends, and he had committed himself, he couldn’t have loved his son more, but he could have done a better job of it. And sometimes he was… he wasn’t _there_ , the way he meant to be, and Charlotte and Cordelia helped, he was grateful for the support and friendship, but Whizzer… Whizzer was a co- _parent_ , a dad. When Jason wanted to do something Marvin was ill-suited for, Whizzer was there to step in and teach him skills Marvin-- and for that matter, Mendel-- lacked. When Marvin was… exhausted, when the world seemed grey and everything took too much effort, Whizzer was there to help with dinner, help with Jason, and love him. Whizzer gave him the space, when he couldn’t do it all at once, on his own, to focus on having a relationship with his son, because someone else could help shoulder all the practical needs. Whizzer made their family _whole_. Losing him leaves a hole.

“I promise I won’t be mad if you want another boyfriend someday.” He throws an arm around Marvin, holds on as tight as his skinny little thirteen year old frame will allow. “Even if I’ll never ever love him ‘cause he’ll never be Whizzer and I don’t want another stepdad, I won’t be mad if you want one. And I could maybe like him. When we’re okay again, you don’t have to be lonely all the time. I won’t ever love him but I won’t be mad.”

“Jason… kiddo, I-- I’m not going to have another boyfriend. I-- sweetheart, I’m probably going to… I’m probably-- no, I’m... _going_ to get sick. Not right away.” He adds quickly, feeling Jason tense up. “Not for a while. But… if I start to get sick, then I won’t hide it from you, all right? Right now, I’m… well, I’m not _okay_. I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m angry. Same as you. And… a lot of other things. But… I’m not going anywhere, either. Not yet.”

“Sick the way Whizzer got sick?” Jason asks, quiet and careful with his words, even as his grip tightens. 

“Yeah.” He kisses the top of his head, just holds him. “Sick… sick the way Whizzer got sick. I-- We-- we don’t understand it yet, but… it, uh, it usually happens to… It happens to men like us, and it-- when it happens to a couple, it happens… together. Not always at the same time, but usually together. There’s not anything anyone can do about it once it gets bad, except what we did for Whizzer. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I am. I want to be there for as much of your life as I can be. I don’t know what the future will bring. But I promise… I’m not going to hide things from you. We… we both learned how that doesn’t work. If I don’t tell you something’s wrong, then you don’t have to worry about it, okay? Okay?”

“Okay.” His voice goes high, his little shoulders shake, and Marvin holds him. Holds him and lets him cry it out, tears soaking into his jacket. 

_“Wear the suit I bought you.” Whizzer says, tugging at his shirt._

_“Hm?”_

_“Jason’s bar mitzvah, I want you to wear the suit I bought you for your birthday, not your old suit. Your old suit is sad.”_

_“I have some news for you, in case you haven’t noticed…”_

_“Your lack of style? I’ve noticed.” He says, though any sting the words might ever have held is undercut by the way he nuzzles into Marvin’s sweatshirt. “Dress nice. Take pictures?”_

_“If he has one.”_

_“He’ll have one.” Whizzer laughs, and kisses his neck, and just holds him. Holds him until the strength in his arms gives out and he flops back against his pillows with a groan. “Dress nice when he does.”_

_“Okay.”_

_“Back of the closet…” He closes his eyes, swallows past a lump in his throat. “There’s a white box. It has a shirt… and a tie.”_

_“What?”_

_“Don’t poke around the bags back there until Hanukkah. I did my shopping early, didn’t know if I’d be in here, or… or-- So your stuff and Jason’s, you know. It’s just… I thought if I’m not around I could leave him one last present. Well, like… a few last presents. Pretty sure you’ll be able to tell which are for Jason and which are for you, and I had to go with a gift card for Trina and Mendel but it’s in there and I wrote a note--”_

_“Baby…”_

_“But the white box that’s not in a bag, that’s your shirt and tie.”_

_“When did you do all this?”_

_“The fact that you never notice any dramatic changes to your own closet really says a lot about you, Marvin.” He teases._

_“It’s September.”_

_“Honey, are you--”_

_“I will wear the suit. I will wear the shirt. I will wear the tie. I will wear anything you buy me, I put myself in your hands.” Marvin kisses him. “You’ll still be here. You’ll still be here, this winter.”_

_“Sure.”_

_“Please… can we just say you’ll still be here?”_

_“For as long as I can. New Years’ would be nice. Wake me up and kiss me at midnight.”_

_“Valentine’s day would be swell. We-- we didn’t get one of those this year, you-- It was already spring when I saw you.”_

_“Marvin…” He reaches up, his hand cups Marvin’s face. The look in his eyes says everything._

_“I want one whole year. Is it too much to ask, to have a year with you?”_

_“No. But you might not get it.”_

_“I have never… I have never been in love like this, I couldn’t... A year’s not enough, nothing’s enough, I-- A lifetime wouldn’t be.”_

_“It’s my lifetime. That’s the best I can give you.”_

_“Then it’s enough.” He shifts to lie with him, to tuck his face to Whizzer’s chest. “I mean nothing’s enough but it’s-- but it’s all I can ask for.”_

_“Everything I can give you, it’s yours.” Whizzer plays with his hair. Marvin’s hand comes to support his elbow before his arm can get shaky. “I love you so much, Marvin, I do.”_

_“I love you, too. Whizzer… for the rest of mine, I will.”_

_“Well… I’ll leave a light on for you. Since I’ll get there first. Whatever’s… left, after this. No rush.”_

_“No rush.” He promises, but it rings a little hollow._

“After…” Marvin swallows. “When I’m not… not in mourning… Look, I know I’m not-- I was never the dad who did… If you want, I-- I’ll try. But you’re going to be the one teaching me about baseball, that’s all. If we go out and throw a ball around, you’ll be the one showing me the ropes.”

“Okay.” Jason squirms out of hiding, though not out of his arms, meets his eyes. “You won’t be too sick?”

“No. I won’t be.” He promises, wiping at tear tracks. “I won’t be too sick to try. Just the regular kind of lousy.”

“Okay. I don’t-- I don’t want to make you worse.”

“Sweetheart, you could _never_.” And he kisses his forehead, and he does what he can to dry the tears that keep coming. “You could never.”

“I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I know.”

“Does Mom know?”

“I haven’t talked to her yet… but I will. I, uh, I didn’t… didn’t get the chance to. And she’s really busy now, helping… helping get everything sorted out, for Whizzer. But I will. I’ll let her know, no secrets. Mendel might have talked to her.”

“You told Mendel _first_?”

“Yeah-- well, not… I, uh… I had to let him know, we had a minute to talk, and he’s gotta be ready to… you know, pull dad duty single-handed, someday. Not soon. Not too soon. I’ll talk to your mom, promise. Jason… I’m sorry. I am.”

“You didn’t get sick on purpose.” He shrugs. “I just don’t want you to. Whizzer said it wasn’t-- that we couldn’t all get sick from him.”

“No. Not… not normally. Not like a, a cold, or-- It’s just, like I said, it’s just me. It’s just… it just seems to happen to-- I am sorry. And I’m sorry I-- I’m just… it’s a hard time. And I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to do now he’s gone, I don’t have any answers. Hey… you know you’re my world, right? And I am going to be here for as long as I can be. Even without answers. Even… even if I’m tired, even if I’m sad, even if I’m not… not doing great. I’m here, and I’m... ” Marvin sighs. “I’ll do my best. You’ll deserve better. But I’ll do my best. And I am… I am so proud. Thank you. For being my kid. Someday, when you’re a dad, you’ll know… you’ll know how much you mean to me.”

And he won’t be there… he won’t be there to see it. However long he gets, it won’t be long enough. But if he lets himself think about that, he’s only going to fall apart again. He can fall apart later. He’s going to fall apart later, he’s going to… who knows how many times. He can try to fall apart when he’s _alone_ , he can try to be strong for Jason’s sake, even if he has no idea how right now. He just has to figure it out.

When Trina comes in, she helps to pack up all he personal belongings strewn around the room, for which he is grateful. She doesn’t say anything, for which he is also grateful, she just prods them out of the hospital bed, puts the suitcase up on the bed, and starts packing, and so he falls in to helping. It’s Jason who prods at him.

“I’m going to go get a soda. From the machine.”

“Honey, no caffeine.” He says on autopilot, shakes his head and digs some change out for him. “Go ahead, go ahead… get whatever you want this time.”

“Sweetheart--” Trina stops him, holds him close a long moment, kisses the top of his head. “Do you want--?”

“I just want to go by myself.”

She sucks in a breath, takes a moment, nods. “Of course. Your dad and I will be right here.”

“Do you want me to bring you one?”

“You don’t have to do that.” She shakes her head. “Just… come on back quick, okay? Don’t _wander_.”

“I won’t.” He does an admirable job of not rolling his eyes, before rushing out. 

Which Marvin supposes is his opening, but he doesn’t quite know what to say. When Trina hugs him, he leans into her, hugs back.

“Thank you.” He whispers.

“You’re in mourning.” She shrugs, without letting go. “What am I supposed to do, not be here? Look… this weekend, come stay at the house. I mean it, I want you to. You can let us look out for you. Spend time with Jason. You don’t have to be on duty for everything, you can just spend _time_ with him.”

“Maybe. Maybe. I don’t… Thank you.”

“You don’t have to be alone.”

“No, I know. I just… the weekend seems so far away, right now. And I-- Whizzer’s… he was on his feet, he was feeling better than he has in days and then… God, I need to, I still need to--”

“Mendel and I can handle it. Whatever it is, funeral arrangements, whatever you need.”

“No, I-- I have to write up the announcement.” He says. He tries to say ‘obituary’, to clarify, his mouth won’t form the word. He’s aware there have been too many obituaries… 

“Why don’t we do that now?” She offers gently. “Sit down, I’ll get a pen. We’ll get through it together.”

“Trina…” He straightens up, touches her cheek. “ _Thank you_.”

She sits him down on the bed beside the suitcase, gets a notepad and pen from her purse and settles into the chair to draft the thing. 

“Is there a… do I put a real first name?”

“Just Whizzer. It’s his name. No one who really knows him uses anything else. And… go ahead and-- He was born in forty-nine, but write it down as fifty, he’d like that. Shave a year off. He didn’t make it to his birthday anyway, he--”

“Sure. Whizzer Brown, nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty-one. Whizzer is survived by his… oh, not ‘boyfriend’, that’s so… but you can’t say ‘lover’, I suppose. What do people normally use? ‘Companion’, isn’t it? Marvin--”

“Husband.” He whispers. “Would you-- would you please write ‘husband’?”

_“What are you_ pelting _me with? Me, on my sickbed. What’s this?”_

_“You’re welcome.” Marvin climbs into bed with him, unwraps a Jolly Rancher from the bag he’d tossed--_ next _to Whizzer, he hadn’t hit him with it-- and pops it into Whizzer’s mouth, which Whizzer does not protest. “The sugar’s supposed to help.”_

_“Help with what?”_

_“What’s it going to hurt?” He shrugs._

_“At this point?”_

_“Supposed to make you feel less sick to your stomach, to suck on. And it’s nice and you like it.”_

_“Mm.” Whizzer shrugs, and laces their fingers together, bends his head towards Marvin’s. Just about everything seems to turn his stomach, he’s had to give up enough of the things he used to enjoy. Chocolate among them, chocolate makes him sick now, he used to love… most kinds, really, though he had favorites._

_Really, his favorite was whatever Marvin bought him, because he liked gifts. Not, as he’d once asserted, to have money splashed around on his behalf, to have the most expensive, the best of something… just to be shown the attention that comes with a gift, to know that Marvin had been somewhere without him and had thought of him and had wanted to give him something. To be… prioritized. Neither of them was used to being loved, but there are things they’d figured out, their second time around. Marvin had learned that Whizzer was delighted with the simple things as well as the fine ones, provided they showed he was in Marvin’s thoughts when they were apart._

_Not that they’ve been apart much, lately._

_“You have one.” Whizzer says, tries and fails to unwrap one, frustrated with his trembling fingers. “Dammit…”_

_“Bad day, baby?” Marvin re-takes his hand, kisses it. He unwraps the second candy, but lets Whizzer take it back from him, lets Whizzer feed it to him. Tucks it into his cheek to be able to keep talking. Might as well let the sugar rot his teeth at this point, the rest of him is going that way soon enough._

_“They’re all pretty bad now. It’s… not looking…”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“No… no, don’t-- hey--” He strokes Whizzer’s cheek. “We just… we take it as it comes. That’s all we can do.”_

_“I’m not looking very good for New Years’. That’s all. I mean, Charlotte tries to be positive, as much as she can without blowing smoke up my ass, but I… I can_ feel _myself… I-- Marv, I--”_

_“Shh, shh…” He pulls him close, gentle, arranges them into the closest position he can, at the angle the bed’s reclined to, to Whizzer’s favorite position for sleeping in, and rubs at his back._

_“I’m so sick of being scared to die. Every time I think I’m not scared anymore, something…” He swallows. Marvin can feel the tears against his neck. “I get over it, or I think I do, and-- that’s how it’s supposed to go, isn’t it? You’re supposed to accept death’s coming. But I’m still frightened.”_

_“Me, too. All the time. Maybe it’s different, maybe I’m never supposed to accept it. But I’m sorry I’m not… braver.”_

_“Don’t be stupid.” Whizzer sniffs, holds him tighter-- as tight as he thinks he_ can _. “You-- you make me feel braver. I don’t know what I’d do, if you weren’t-- if I had to go through this alone. And I hate that I’m not, sometimes, I hate that you’re-- I don’t want this for you. Any of it. But if I didn’t have you, I doubt I’d… I wouldn’t last this long if you didn’t take such good care of me. Give me something to fight for, just for another day. Another day where I can see that face.”_

_“Not much of a face.”_

_“Did I not just ask you to not be stupid? That’s my favorite face, mister. Now come on.” He pulls back to look at him, to rest a hand against his cheek. “And give me my favorite smile.”_

_Marvin does his best. All his smiles have felt tired, lately, and sad, but… when he looks into Whizzer’s eyes, when he sees the fire that still burns in them, he does find he can smile. Maybe tired and sad, but lovestruck as well._

_“You wanna swap Jolly Ranchers?” Whizzer asks, bobbing his eyebrows._

_“That’s disgusting.” Marvin snorts._

_“Hey, you’d be trading up. You’ve got grape, I’ve got watermelon.”_

_“I am perfectly happy with grape.”_

_Whizzer chuckles softly, lays against his chest. For a while, they’re just… quiet, together. Just the sound of hard candy being sucked on, over the usual sounds of the hospital. Just the weight of Whizzer against him, so… so_ light _. One of Whizzer’s hands creeping into the pocket of his sweatshirt._

_“Do you want to know something really stupid?” Whizzer breaks the silence._

_“Is it about my face?”_

_“Everything is about your face.” He lifts his head, and kisses Marvin-- it’s soft, it’s gentle, it tastes very faintly of artificial fruit even without tongue. “I know we never… that it’s just… But it still feels like we were robbed, I still hate that I never got to…”_

_“Whizzer?”_

_“Marry you.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“I mean we never really believed we would.”_

_“But it would have been nice… even if it was just a party, even if it was just a handful of people we could say a few words in front of.”_

_“An excuse to eat some cake.” He smiles sadly, his hand still in Marvin’s pocket._

_“I’d have liked that. But at least you’re wearing my ring. Which was silly, and stupid, but every day you have it I can at least… I don’t know. It means something to me, even if it’s never-- even if we never could have…”_

_“I wouldn’t be able to enjoy cake now if I had one, anyway.” Whizzer swallows. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of champagne, though.”_

_“Why am I not surprised that’s the one thing you think you could stomach?”_

_“Well. You know me.” He shrugs, hand slipping free of Marvin’s pocket only to toy with a drawstring. “Love to live that high life.”_

_“Mm. Sorry I didn’t smuggle any in to you, then.”_

_“No caviar, either. Really, Marvin, your standards are slipping… ah, just as well.” He sighs, and the sparkle in his eyes betrays the look of longsuffering he attempts, in the moment before he flips the sheet up over Marvin’s face. “This is the best I can do for a wedding veil, champagne and caviar would be wasted on an affair like this.”_

_“Hey!” Marvin laughs, grabs him around the waist. “Since when do I need a wedding veil?”_

_“Oh, but Marvin, you make such a lovely bride.” Whizzer cackles until he coughs, until he needs Marvin to rub at his chest to help calm him._

_“_ I _proposed to_ you _.” He points out, still under the sheet. But then again, so is Whizzer’s chest. He watches the circles his hand makes, tries not to think about how frail Whizzer’s grown._

_“Mm, but you’re prettier.”_

_“Not in a million years.” He tugs the sheet back down, and kisses Whizzer. Tongue this time, a little. A kiss he’ll think of every time he eats something that tastes like fake watermelon. “Not in a million years.”_

_“I’ve lost my looks.”_

_“Never.”_

_Whizzer snorts, but he lets Marvin stroke his cheek and he doesn’t argue with him about it. He’s… gaunt, sallow. Even when Marvin is able to get his hair washed, it’s lank now in a way it never used to be. The dark circles under his eyes are ever-present. He looks distressingly close to death, yes, but…_

_But he’ll never be anything but beautiful, because it’s not about his pretty face, his perfect body… those may be things of the past, but his eyes are his eyes, even tired or glassy, because the curve of his smile is the same as it ever was, the very first time it took Marvin’s breath away. Because, miraculously, he is here loving Marvin, after all his mistakes. Making jokes in the face of his fears because they both need them, playful and sweet on his worst days, even if it’s only a moment out of a day of pain and fear and holding each other through the tears… even then, he summons up moments and every single day he reminds Marvin why he’s in this, why they’re fighting, why it’s worth it._

_“Well, maybe you need to get your eyes checked.” This time Whizzer pulls the covers up over the both of them. “My vanity’s past flattering, honey.”_

_“Okay, well… your face is my favorite face, how is that?”_

_“... Okay.”_

_“I could still… I mean-- okay, so we’ve got no rabbi, no guests, and no cake. We’ve got a ring. My offer to break a glass still stands.”_

_“Honey if you can find one…” Whizzer chuckles-- Marvin rubs at his chest preemptively, but it’s soft enough he doesn’t set himself off coughing. “I love you, you know that? I-- I’m just sorry. I’m just sorry that when I give you every day I have left, there aren’t more of them. I’m sorry it’s going to be a lousy honeymoon.”_

_“Give me fifteen minutes without the heart monitor alerting the nurse’s station and I’ll be happy.”_

_“I mean there’s not much point in me wearing it all the time when you’re here. Everyone knows I’m dying. Something goes wrong with my heart when I’ve got company and you can hit the call button, open the door and scream for someone. I don’t see the appeal in all_ this _, but I’d love to feel… I’d love to feel human again, I’d love to feel like me again. I’d love to feel… like I’m not gone yet. You could make me feel alive.”_

_It feels so unfair, to really think about that, what being robbed of sex means to Whizzer. True, they’ve built a relationship that doesn’t revolve around it, this time around, but… but he’s young, he was so healthy before this, he had appetites, he had pride in his skills, he’d been a highly sexual person, he’d… It might not define him the way it did when he was younger, but it brought him joy in life. It made him happy, to share touch, to be hungered for, to push himself to a pleasant exhaustion and work up a mutual sweat. It was something so vital to him, monogamy didn’t change that._

_Hell, in some ways it heightened it. Or… everything about the changes they made the second time around did. Sex was transformed, sacred. No longer was it the linchpin of a relationship they couldn’t be honest in, something good and hot and sometimes on the knife’s edge of painful, something raw where the walls between them came down but never far enough… no, when they came back to each other, sex was…_

_Beautiful. Honest. It was like going the rest of the way, on a journey they’d half made. Not just because Marvin had been open to more things physically, but… just, the way they could be with each other. The connection. The intensity of it sometimes, the way they learned to take their time and the way they learned to ask for what they needed, and the way it felt… The way it felt to be Whizzer’s, body and soul, and know it was mutual. The way it felt to be worn out and to still want to reach for each other. To want to roll back into each other’s arms, to want to kiss… to not have the afterglow cut short. To trust each other more and to learn each other’s bodies, not just what could feel good, but which things felt_ best _._

_At least they have what they have. Marvin gets to be the one to bathe him, an activity which is made more bearable by long, lingering touches, by tenderness, by soft kisses. By the reminder, voiced or otherwise, that it is still a pleasure to touch his body, even if they’ve been robbed of so much, even if he’s lost the physique he took pride in, even if it’s never sex… It’s still a pleasure to touch him, to feel warm skin beneath his hands and know he’s still kicking, and to think anything he might do for him could make him feel better._

_“I want you.” Marvin sighs, continues the slow, firm circles over Whizzer’s chest even with no threat of a cough looming. “I want you. I want to be married to you.”_

_“I’m afraid ‘in sickness or in health’ is a foregone conclusion in my case.”_

_“Mine, too.” He shrugs. “Who cares? If I could make a vow to you that’s… not how it would go.”_

_“What would you say?”_

_“I would say… it seems impossible I haven’t known you forever, because I feel like I know you so well. And it seems unfair I won’t know you for years to come, because I want to keep on knowing you. But I want all of you, exactly as you are, for as long as I’m allowed. And I want to be yours, for longer.”_

_“That’s really beautiful.” Whizzer toys with his sleeve, before his hand slides up to cover Marvin’s. To keep it over his heart-- or, over where the ring rests. “You_ thought _about that. Like… you’ve_ been _thinking.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“Well, I do. I haven’t… This was never a possibility to me. And you got a practice run, which is unfair--”_

_“Trust me, I don’t think it counts as an advantage.”_

_He chuckles. “But I love you. And I’ve loved being your fiance. Wearing your ring. Pretending… pretending we lived in a different world. And I… when you’re not with me-- okay, this is cheesy…”_

_“If you can’t be cheesy now, when can you?”_

_“Whenever I’m alone, and scared, in all of this, I… I’m just glad I have the ring, that’s all. I feel like you’re with me. Dumb, huh?”_

_“No.” He shakes his head. “Not dumb. Not at all. I’m yours.”_

_“I’m yours.” Whizzer nods._

_Marvin kisses him, before extracting himself from the bed._

_“Where are you going?” He laughs, reaching after him. “Hey, come back here.”_

_“No-- I mean yes, in a minute.” Marvin casts around the room, before finally accepting that the best he’s going to find is the paper cup from when Whizzer had taken his last round of anti-nausea meds. “I don’t think it’s possible to_ break _this. But I said I was going to, so… unless you’ve got something better than this lying around...”_

_“You-- you… ridiculous-- Just come back to bed. You don’t get to marry me and then step on a fucking Dixie cup.”_

_“I don’t get to marry you. If I asked the nurse to bring you another glass of water, would I get another paper cup, or do you think someone would bring me a real one?”_

_“Depends on the nurse. They might ask you to reuse the one you’ve got. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Marvin, but the entire time I’ve been here, I’ve never had a cup that wasn’t paper or silverware that wasn’t plastic. My life’s become pretty disposable.” He winces. “Sorry. I didn’t mean-- just… Forget it. We were never going to get--”_

_“Yeah. Yeah, sure…”_

_“Marvin… I mean I think you’re sweet. I mean I’m sorry, that it’s not-- that we can’t have real things.”_

_“I know.”_

_“Would it mean something to you like this, or would it feel unfair, and hollow, and shitty? That this is all we’ve got?”_

_“The fact that this is all we get is monumentally shitty, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t mean something to me to… I mean, I-- Isn’t that our life story? We get nothing, not a fraction of what we should get, and it’s shitty, but I love you and I want it all. I want it all, I want to marry you and I’m not going to apologize for that. I want every single day with you, I want to call you my husband, even if the world thinks it’s crazy.”_

_“Well, thank you for not considering my vase an acceptable substitute, because we’d be getting a divorce real fucking fast if you broke that.” Whizzer smiles at him. “Can you crank me?”_

_“Save it for the honeymoon.”_

_“The_ bed _, smart guy, crank me down flat so I can lie on my side. Then you can smash the fucking Dixie cup.”_

_“Will it mean something to you like this, or will it feel unfair, and hollow, and shitty? That this is all we’ve got?” Marvin asks him, setting the cup aside and hurrying to get the bed horizontal again. He helps Whizzer to roll over._

_“It means something to me that you want to be married.”_

_“It’s all I want.” He bends over the bed to kiss Whizzer’s temple. “Lover. You’re all I want.”_

_“Husband.” Whizzer sighs. “Call me your husband. Just… while I can still enjoy it.”_

_“_ Husband _.” Marvin smiles._

_When he does crawl back into bed, Whizzer pulls the covers up over them again, shrouds them in further privacy. In_ seclusion _, he thinks. And this, this is all he needs. Eight minutes to hold Whizzer in his arms without the outside world interrupting, maybe ten. Maybe eighteen, maybe an hour._

_“Husband.” He repeats, softly._

_“Husband.” Whizzer echoes, hand coming up to rest at Marvin’s heart._

“Husband.” Trina copies the word down. “Survived by his husband Marvin, and his-- and his step-son Jason.”

“And by Trina and Mendel, who are… family, in some weird way I don’t know how to articulate for a fucking obituary.” He adds, and this time the word comes easy, but it comes with tears.

“And by friends Trina and Mendel. If you need to be alone, I can go and find Jason...”

“No, I… he’ll come back, he’s just giving us a minute. You, um… I know I haven’t-- God, I know I haven’t… fucking, at any time, said any of the right things to you.”

“That’s not true. It used to be. But… I’ll send this out.” She finishes helplessly, waving the notepad. “Mendel’s staying until they finish taking care of Whizzer, for the burial. He says you were already signed up for a plot.”

“For two.”

She nods. “For two. Are you…?”

“Going to be. Sick.” He nods. “I’ve talked to Jason--”

“You told Jason about this? _Today_?”

“If there’s one thing I have learned, it’s that keeping it from him won’t help, and today was already as bad as it could _get_ , yes, I told him today. I told him I’m not sick yet. I told him I won’t hide it from him when it happens. I told him… What am I supposed to do, lie to our son?”

“Today, Marvin--”

“Because today’s already ruined, I should ruin tomorrow? Trina, I am sorry I didn’t discuss it with you first but my life has been-- I mean you know what my life has been.” He spreads his arms. “And he’s… I don’t know, we were crying already, I figured we could get it all over with at once. He’ll be okay. We’ve all been doing our best, my best is shit, I am sorry. My husband died, my son wants answers I don’t have, I don’t have _room_ in me to have any thoughts or feelings about the fact that I’m dying… so I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Neither do I.” She sighs. “I don’t know if today was the best day, that’s all.”

“He spent too long not understanding, with Whizzer, it made things worse. He needs to be prepared, for me. If we’d known then what I’ve seen now, we could have made it easier on him. I need to make it easier on him. Trina… the _only_ thing that matters, with me, is how to make it easier on Jason. So he needs to know, before I can scare him with symptoms.”

And… Well, this is no time to mention it to Trina-- no, he won’t bring it up with Trina. He’s not sure he can bring it up with Mendel, Mendel will take it the wrong way, try to talk to him like he’s depressive when he’s being rational. _Maybe_ with Charlotte. But he knows Whizzer wasn’t even a worst case… and seeing how bad it got for him was bad enough. If he ever got to the point where he wasn’t himself… at that point, a little too much morphine would be a kindness all around. His life wouldn’t really be _his_ , he wouldn’t call it a life worth preserving, at that point. If his prolonged existence is only causing needless pain and he’s not even present enough to be there for his family… he’ll have to figure out who he can trust with that. It's going to be enough of an emotional burden on Jason as a best case scenario, he won't put him through the worst. He’s only glad he never had to be on this side of making that call, that Whizzer stayed Whizzer. That even at the end, he was… he had a life worth living. And the best last day they could give him.

With precious little he can be grateful for, there is that.


End file.
